Description
They said I was lucky,
born into the cloud, into connection,
but connection was the leash.
Every click — a breadcrumb,
every selfie — a scan.
They tagged my joy for future use,
built an archive of my fear, called it insight.
My grandmother never typed.
She coded in breath, in rhythm, in handclap.
Said the first encryption was the drum,
the mouth, the original modem.
–Excerpt from “Black Box Manifesto”
Button is excited to announce this year’s winner of Button’s Chapbook Contest!
BLACK BOX FLIGHT RECORDER is a speculative Afrofuturist archive about a Black girl who severs herself from the surveillance systems that shaped her — family, technology, empire— and, through the wreckage of revolution and its aftermath, discovers that freedom is both loss and becoming.